As a retired engineer, it seems to me that once you understand what
"dee ex, dee tee" means it would be no more cumbersome than any other
collection of sounds we might utter. For me it was more the concept of
limits as dt->0 than the way a symbol is read that was the real
challenge.

Once I learned to "speak math", myself and my fellow engineers had no
trouble at all "conversing" in math. As for the second derivative,
where I worked at least we tended to say "dee-two-ex, dee-two-tee",
not altogether dissimilar to "are-two-dee-two" or "see-three-pee-oh".

--gary

On Mon, Jun 7, 2010 at 8:59 PM, Douglas Treadwell
<[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> Anyone here have any ideas about better ways of verbalizing calculus equations? For example dx/dt is normally said as "the derivative of x with respect to t" or "dee ex, dee tee", but both are cumbersome. It gets even worse when you have d^2x/d^2t, "the second derivative of x with respect to t" or "dee squared ex, dee squared tee", etc. I'm interested in any suggestions you might have.
>
> - Doug
>